Family Leptoceratopsidae? Phylum Chordata | Class Reptilia Scientific name Bainoceratops efremovi Rank Genus | |
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Similar Asiaceratops, Lamaceratops, Breviceratops, Platyceratops, Cerasinops | ||
Bainoceratops (Bain: mountain, keras: horn, ops: face) was a genus of dinosaur from the late Campanian in the Late Cretaceous. It was a ceratopsian first described by Tereschenko and Alifanov in 2003. Its fossils were found in southern Mongolia.
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Classification
Bainoceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Greek for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 66 million years ago.
Unfortunately, Bainoceratops is only known from a vertebral column. This is enough to distinguish it from Protoceratops and show that it is more closely related to Udanoceratops tschizhovi
Diet
Bainoceratops, like all ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.